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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Lessons from The Chilean Miners

There they were. Huddled away in the darkness, invisible to the rest of the world, completely dependent on another for survival. They relied on a long cord to provide them food and other necessities for life. Contrasted against the immenseness of the universe, even the Earth itself, they could be described as tiny, very tiny, even just small "masses of cells" or "clumps of tissue." Some of them could quite possibly be unwanted, unloved. All of them there by no choice of their own.

No, I don't speak of unborn babies in the womb. I speak of the 33 Chilean miners trapped deep within the darkness of the Earth for 69 days.

Of course, the entire world recognizes that those miners, despite their location, size, or complete dependency on others for survival, are people - people with immeasurable value and worth. Their dignity and value is sensed by the world. Hence the desperate attempts to save them.

Indeed, I would suggest that onlookers saw their own value mirrored in theirs. That is why the whole world celebrated as the miners emerged triumphantly one at a time from the confines of that dark space.

That is also why we (although perhaps not all) celebrate when a baby emerges from her dark world. We welcome the new life with immense joy and are made acutely aware of the dignity, value, and worth that all of us possess.

Sadly, much of the world currently fails to recognize the personhood of the child before birth. We argue that because she is so small or so dependent, she is not really a person and thus does not possess an inalienable right to life. To many, she is simply a mass of tissue with little or no worth that can be destroyed at will.

The fact is whether a trapped miner or an unborn baby waiting to make that journey through the dark, confined canal toward the light of day, we are all human persons who have been created equal and deserve to have our inherent rights to life, liberty, and security of the person recognized and protected in law.